This booklet reflects the questions raised at the workshop ‘’Adult Learning, Democracy and Peace’’ at the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) held in July 1997 in Hamburg.

The workshop had the important role of examining the relationship between adult learning, democracy, citizenship, gender, civil society and a culture of peace. It discussed adult learning strategies that are required to meet democratic aspirations, foster a culture of peace, build identities, take into account the globalization of economies, deal with the ecological threats, cultivate...

A glossary, regardless of which discipline it relates to, constitutes a tool linked to a precise historical period or a current of thought. This is particularly true for adult education. The fact that the first terminologies of the seventies are used today in compiling encyclopaedias, dictionaries, and glossaries is a sign of the times. In all the member-states of the European Union, adult education is leaving behind its image as an underestimated sector, under the care of well meaning people.

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Adult education, gender and monitoring and the evaluation are three separate areas that have undergone redefinition and reconceptualization in the last ten years. Adult education, which is commonly associated with literacy, basic education, and vocational and technical education, no encompasses, among other things, health education, leadership training, and conflict resolution seminars offered by diverse providers, from the state, the corporate world, academe, and NGOs to people’s organisations. Gender, a seemingly neutral concept, which refers to the social construction of the sexes, is...

This publication of this book on women’s non-formal education in Latin America arises from a series of activities jointly organized by the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Hamburg and the German Foundation for International Development (DSE) focusing on innovative education processes. A three-year research programme analysed a range of non-formal adult education programmes in countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Vase studies enabled the analysis of specific themes, such as the role of pedagogy, gender, the relations between groups and institutions, and the way in which...

Population education is in the throes of redefinition as the contributions to this book illustrate. Just as the population field itself has been critically reconstructed in the pre- and post- Cairo years of the past decade, so too have the substantive and semantic contents of adult learning programmes. A quick glance at some of the topics relating to the field of population education and contained in this volume underpins this point: sexuality, AIDS education, women’s empowerment, ageing, male involvement, masculinities, inter-generational learning, violence, reproductive rights,...

This report brings together five major papers dealing with different aspects in the economics and financing of adult learning. The UNESCO-PROAP four country impact study examines the social benefits of adult learning in developing countries. Roy Carr-Hill discusses the costs and benefits for Over-Serviced and developing countries.

Download: The Economics and Financing of Adult Education: Report of CONFINTEA V (PDF 6,21 MB)

For many months, an armed conflict has been raging in one of the largest countries on the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaïre). This is a country that arouses covetousness on account of its fabulous riches. The misery caused by any armed conflict and the resultant distress are exacerbated by the problems facing most countries in the world today. Thousands of people, especially young people, are living acutely precarious lives because of unemployment. Even when work is available, the sub-human conditions under which it is carried out strip it of any positive...

If adult education, in any or all of its many guises, is intended to open the doors of knowledge and to widen the cultural and intellectual horizons of people who either achieve maturity without having had the benefit of full basic education, or of those who, having been fortunate enough to complete certain levels of formal schooling, still need or desire to obtain further learning or training at a later stage in their lives, then surely the over two hundred million indigenous and tribal peoples who are scattered over the world should be considered prime targets for adult educational...

The more fragile the world becomes and the more uncertain the perceptions of its future, the more confidence, hope and expectations are placed in both the creative and lifelong learning potential of the individual. The closer the approach of the 21 st century, the more urgently visions of the future role of adult learning are formulated. The more immediate the effects of globalization are felt, the more determined the quest for empowerment through active citizenship and adult learning – rooted locally and impacting globally.

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ALPHA 97 revisits three earlier publications from the same series: ALPHA 92, focusing on literacy strategies in the community movement; ALPHA 96, on cultural development in rural areas; and ALPHA 96, on basic education in work (full details provided at the end of this volume). Whereas these studies were structured as monographs and focused on local frameworks and outcomes, ALPHA 97’s remit was to expand the scope to examine the relationship between these frameworks, between actions and the structures underpinning their organization, and between the range of practices being implemented and...